Many types of electronic child protection systems exist. Such systems often use a global positioning system (GPS), a single GPS marker which may be attached to the child, and a single active communications device (tracker), such as a smartphone or GPS tracking system. When a child goes missing, he or she may be located using a GPS signal from the marker, provided the signal can be detected.
Several traditional systems have also been developed for locating missing persons. One example of such a system is the well-known America's Missing Broadcast Emergency Response Alert (“Amber alert”) wherein law enforcement leverages a community of persons to look for a missing child. Generally, Amber alerts involve transmitting details of the missing child, e.g., via television and/or radio, to a plurality of individuals. Individuals receiving this information are asked to look for the missing child and report back to law enforcement with any information they might have.
While existing child protection systems are useful in many environments, they have several limitations. For example, known electronic child protection systems generally rely on a single tracker attached to the child that is designed with GPS and communications systems to locate, track, and report the child's location back to a parent or some other central monitoring service. If the tracker loses power, is unable to establish communication with GPS and/or communication system, and/or is detached from the child, the electronic search system may not be able to perform its function. Thus, the effectiveness of existing electronic search systems may be neutralized by a single point of failure in the system. Moreover, such systems may be of limited usefulness indoors, because the walls and ceiling of a building can interfere with the transmission and reception of a GPS signal.
Traditional search systems such as the Amber alert may not suffer from the technological limitations of known electronic systems, and may address the single point of failure issue by leveraging the eyes and ears of many individuals to search for a lost child (or other moving object). However, traditional search systems are generally only effective if they are initiated based on accurate and timely information regarding the whereabouts and/or appearance of the lost child. If a traditional search is initiated based on out-of-date information, the likelihood that it will successfully locate the missing child may dramatically decrease. This issue is compounded by the fact that the last known location of a missing child is often not updated (or only infrequently updated) as a traditional search is performed. As a result, even if a traditional search is initiated in an area where the child is located, the child may move (or be moved) out of that location white the search is in progress. Participants in the search may not become aware of the child's movement out of the search area until a significant time later. During this time, the search participants may continue to fruitlessly search in an initial search area, while the child they are seeking may be moving away from them. Traditional searches may also rely on line of sight to locate and identify a lost child. If the search participants do not see the child, the search may fail even if it is conducted in a location where the child is located.
Electronic systems have also been developed for locating lost pets and or stolen objects. Such systems may rely on the same technology as the electronic child protection systems described above, and thus may have the same limitations. Pet identification systems utilizing radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are also known. Although useful REID pet identification systems may require a pet to be captured before it can be identified, e.g., by scanning the RFID tag with an appropriate device held in close proximity to the pet. As a result, existing RFID tagging systems may not be useful for determining the location of a lost pet prior to its capture.